Intumescent strips are an important feature on fire doors, but they can often get abused during their lives, potentially affecting the performance of fire doors.
British fit-out manufacturer Morland, which also has a fire door manufacturing operation, has focused heavily on this area to come up with a solution that it says is more attractive, protects the seal better and is more-environmentally friendly than the traditional plastic encapsulation.
Its solution is Forever Firecheck, which is fully encapsulated within the door jamb and covered by either a recoatable paint grade material, veneer (max 1mm thick), PVC and CPL (at maximum 180 microns) or paper.
The latter option allows the seal to show through, which research indicates some clients prefer and lifting the blade of a hinge allows the graphite seal to be seen. A “visual clue” of the seal can also be left on the moulding by putting an indicator groove in.
Siting of the strip within the door jamb prevents it from working loose or being damaged during operation of the door, which Morland says creates a safer product with a lower maintenance cost.
Smoke control is provided by batwings fitted to the door stop so there is no friction from the action of the door working them loose. A smoke seal to the door stop is fitted in Morland’s factory, again removing any issues with on-site installation.
Testing of the system took place at Warrington under the BWF Certifire scheme using Mann McGowan P500 graphite seal. Results show the profile wrapping technology does not impair the effectiveness of the Mann McGowan seal.
The seal is reel fed into a groove in the frame in Morland’s factory at 18 linear metres a minute to achieve a cost effective door frame and seal solution.
Since its launch at UK Construction Week in 2018, Morland has reported increasing interest and take-up of Forever Firecheck, with several major door manufacturers already on board.
Elliott, the UK trading name of the global modular builder Algeco, is adopting Forever Firecheck within its standard detailing on fire doors and modular housebuilder Rollalong and London developer Pocket Living are both now specifying the product.
Vicaima has added the product to its global assessment and Halspan is due to follow suit in this quarter.
Morland expects the mental health care market to adopt the concept imminently as the current requirement often leads to the intumescent seal being cut into 100mm lengths and screw fixed into the frame. Forever Firecheck means the strips cannot be removed, or lost, said the company.
Jim Cowell, technical director of Elliott, said the BWF’s Fire Door Inspection scheme reports that 61% of fire doors inspected in installations across the UK have a problem with the seals. “That is a truly frightening landscape,” he said.
“So, for Elliott it is attractive to eliminate a detail that could go wrong. The seals in the header of a door frame are defying gravity, relying on 15mm of self-adhesive tape to hold them in place.
“The smoke seals interact with the opening forces of heavy fire doors so it is not hard to understand how a seal can work loose over time. We take every step we can to ensure our buildings comply with every aspect of the building regulations including passive fire protection.”
Mr Cowell said Forever Firecheck solved the issue of a fire seal working loose and thereby maintains its fire protection.
“The trend in construction is for factory finished product,” said Andy Warren, Morland’s commercial director. “Morland’s wrapping capability allows us to offer architectural profiles that need no finishing or we can offer paint grade. The principle of wrapping over a graphite seal rather than encapsulating it in plastic has been proven by our testing to be as good, if not better.
“To date, we have only tested with Morland and Vicaima production, but we have shared our test evidence with others,” continued Mr Warren. “We are investing in testing in the coming years and as the fire engineers see the consistent results the product can be assessed more readily.
“With CE marking on the horizon a solution like Forever Firecheck is robust compared with the site practice of removing seals to paint frames and then re-instating them on site at a later date.”
On the environmental side of things, Morland estimates Forever Firecheck could remove millions of linear metres of plastic every year.
Morland fire doors featuring Forever Firecheck are supplied and labelled under BWF Certifire (Certificate CF5533).
